Consumers Generally Protect SSNs and PINs – Mobile Phones – Not So Much

Stupid Americans imperil confidential work documents, financial information, personal photos, and myriads other private information because they willingly share their mobile passcodes and often give their unlocked devices to others.

Consumers keep more and more sensitive personal and professional information on their mobile phones, but most people remain alarmingly casual about adequately protecting that private content, according to new report from Keepsafe, entitled The Myth of Mobile Phone Privacy.

The survey found that people are fiercely protective of email passwords, ATM pins and social security numbers, but while they increasingly use their phones to store that information, they are relatively relaxed about protecting access to the phone itself.

Key findings from the report include:

Is my phone private? 70% of respondents think their personal content and information on their mobile device is only somewhat private or not private at all;

Why should I protect my info? 50% don’t think they keep private content or information on their phone, despite using phones to send and receive work emails and using mobile banking, payment and shopping apps;

Can I see your phone? 66% have given their phone passcode to someone else and 74% have handed their phone to someone unlocked, leaving themselves open to privacy breaches.

Keepsafe conducted an additional, more specific survey of over 1,000 of its own Keepsafe users, 48% said they’ve given their unlocked phone to a stranger to have them take a photo, and 82% said a stranger had given them an unlocked phone to take a photo.

The data show 1 in 3 people have had something pop up on their phones that others saw, and 1 in 4 people say it was something embarrassing — data that further demonstrates how basic passcodes fail to deliver the content privacy that consumers need.

Over 50 million people use Keepsafe’s secure vault to protect their private photos, videos, and documents.

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